Four Weeks in Psalms

For the next four weeks, I have the privilege of preaching at Community of Faith Lutheran Church. I've been blessed with a great relationship with this congregation that allows me to preach whatever I decide when they ask me to come in. Over the next four Sundays, I'll be taking them through four different Psalms and asking the question, Where is Christ in these songs? It'll be the first time I preach through a good chunk of Psalms.

I begin each day with a Psalm and then some other readings. I have certainly read every Psalm more than twice and I find immense satisfaction in the words of the ancient songwriters. But for years I have always thought that the purpose of the Psalms was solely aesthetic. I believed that there was very little room for Biblical exegesis and exhortation.

And then this:

"The delightful study of the Psalms has yielded me boundless profit and ever-growing pleasure; common gratitude constrains me to communicate to others a portion of the benefit, with the prayer that it may induce them to search further for themselves." - from "Preface," Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Treasury of David: An Original Exposition of the Book of Psalms.

After reading that, I immediately thought of Lewis who, in his introduction to Reflections on the Psalms, wrote against the preaching and studying of a Psalm but directly after that breaks down Parallelism, Repetition, and Meter in Biblical songs. He could not help himself.

I've rested with the idea that we are actually to do both with the Psalms - we must enjoy them and study them, listen and unpack them. We do this because they are beautiful and after admiration comes examination. After we recognize something as beautiful it is often the task of the onlooker to say, "Why is that so beautiful? Why do I enjoy that? Why does that satisfy?"

My last couple of days have been looking into that question: What makes these Psalms so right? So beautiful? I'm excited to share them with the church.